>>10952178Heavy ex-smoker, 1+ year free now.
Go full out research mode. Nicotine patches, gum, vaping. Seek profession advice. Consider hypnosis. Some countries have special phone helplines. Find out everything you can about quitting first.
Then armed with this information decide upon a strategy. Prepare well in advance. Have back up plans.
Think of it as a military offensive behind which you must throw all available resources.
Addiction affects people differently. Do not listen to people who say things like "just use will power", if that worked for everyone then we wouldn't have alcoholics, problem gambling, heroine addiction, etc.
Be prepared for failure, but dont let it bug you. Sometimes it can take a few attempts, not everyone is successful on their first attempt.
Be flexible with time expectations. It may take you months to quit, it may take years.
Me: Quit 2 times using patches. Relapsed before a year was out. This time I used a combination of patches, gum and vape. Got accustomed to vaping while smoking. swapping between them, this was a good move since vaping isn't really like smoking ciggies. 1 month. Then used patches to stop smoking, but used vape when I got jittery. Had gum occasionally on bad days, it provides a more instant and noticeable hit. Used gum about a week.
Reduced patches gradually over 3 months. Vape use increased.
So after 3 months I was vape only. Initially started on 18mg vape juice. Every 3 or so months reduced to 12, then 6 and now down to 3. Consumption of juice would increase each time I dropped strength, then would drop and level out. This was self imposed, not natural, but certainly easy enough to do without getting the jitters. Each strength drop gets bit harder, but not too bad.
All that time only had a few instances of wanting a ciggie. Very momentary. No real desire otherwise, as the vape provides my nico hit, even at 3mg. Plan now is to lower by stages to eventually 0mg over the next year. Confident.
